Even though we went to bed late but we got up early since we didn't want to waste any time. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do", so we asked the guesthouse owner where we could get the local breakfast. A small restaurant only few minutes away had simple but delicious food.
We hurried to town for Cherry Blossoms festival at Yeouido park. We were wondering when we got off at the Yeouido station whether we were at the right place because we saw only buildings. After asking a local, we continued walking. There was no sign of the fest, so we asked the 2nd local, who pointed to the opposite direction!!!! We had to go to the parliament building area.
In front of the parliament, we found only a construction site! Oh dear!!!! Desperately, we asked the 3rd local. He said there was no such festival. "The festival is only on the weekend, but you can go behind the building. There were many trees in blossom to see." How could we be so wrong???
And there it was; the crowd and ...the blossoms! The street behind the parliament parallel to Hangang river had its own beauty. Cherry blossoms stretched as far as our eyes could see. There were not many people yet because the festival opened officially in the afternoon. There were lot of art pieces along the street, and all about flowers.
Along the way, there was lot of street food. We tried sticky rice cake with pumpkin, a pancake like filled with brown sugar and cinnamon (in the picture on the left). Those boosted our strength to walk up to a metro station.
The first thing we did in Insa-dong was to visit a tea house. Dawon Tea House in Kyung In museum had great tea and nice setting. It was pricey but worth it. We experienced that most of the tea houses are expensive in Korea. The herbal Sang-hwa tea was really really good. Our afternoon was a pleasant one: just strolling through Insa-dong, visiting from gallery to gallery. Our 2nd tea house, Yetchatjip, was cosy and their tea was ok.
In Korea, one must buy some famous Insam (Korean name for Ginseng) as souvenir. However, to buy it from a department store or a big shop was not our style ;). Thanks to "Seoul's best 100" booklet that we got from the tourist info at the airport, which gave us direction to Kyungdong Oriental Medicine market (Metro line 1, exit 3,4). We managed to find this Sang-hwa tea that we liked so much at the tea house this morning, but it was in powder form. The shop where we bought red ginseng generously gave us few handful of Ginseng candies! Yummy!
Just before getting in the metro station, our way to dinner, we saw a shop selling hopang (steamed round buns with vegetable or meat filling). We got one bun each. It was super delicious!
The dinner was grilled pork in a small restaurant near city hall. It was recommended by many people from Pantip forum. One lady staff took care of us very well. She taught us how to grill the food and even... how to eat it! She kept an eye on us every now now and then. When we left, it was their dinner time, and they offered us some of their food to try. We took couple of pictures with them, and left the place with a full stomach and smiles on our faces.
Then, we spent some time trying to get a rental mobile phone. After we agreed to rent one and signed the paper, we tried to use internet. It only worked with an operator portal in Korean characters. Oops! Fortunately, they understood and let us cancel the deal. While Alex was dealing with the mobile phone, I got a T-Money card for 3000 won and topped it up with 27,000 won. We put so much money in because we thought to use it with the limousine bus to town which costed 9,000 won each. However, the cashier of the bus company didn't accept the T-Money.
Each of us had a glass of iced green tea on the way to the next palace. Not so good but at least kept Alex awake a bit.
Luckily, he has not got Alzheimer and his brain has more gyn, so the whole plan was somewhere in there!